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Firefox Containers Preview

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Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#51

Post by ptx »

This is not new, and it's weird that this blog post doesn't acknowledge that.

A a snapshot from 2017 [0] of their docs show the UI for this very feature. A snapshot from 2023 of their knowledge base [1] says that "Firefox Containers is a basic built-in feature".

I just created a new profile in Firefox 140 ESR, started it in safe mode (which disables extensions), enabled "privacy.userContext.enabled" in about:config - and there you go, native containers accessible from File -> New Container Tab.

I'm not talking about the Multi-Account Containers extension. There are no extensions installed or enabled. It comes with Firefox 140 ESR, without extensions.

The Containers feature is already a "native, first-party feature" in older versions of Firefox. Firefox already has a "first-party version of containers". They have already brought it "directly into the heart of Firefox for all to benefit".

So what are they talking about in this blog post? Are they simply flipping the config setting to true by default? Are they replacing the existing "Containers" feature with a new feature which is also called "Containers"? Are they rebranding the Multi-Account Containers extension as "Containers" and making it built-in (seemingly not, since apparently "Not all of the features of the add-on are available in the first-party version of containers").

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20170821073747/https://developer...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230307151023/https://support.m...

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#52

Post by BlueGreenMagick »

waz0wski wrote: post #20
chao- wrote: post #13

Firefox's Multi-Account Containers changed the game for me back in 2018 or 2019, and is what got me to switch back to Firefox for 95% of my personal browser use. The "Always open {{domain}} in this container" and the ability to open a specific container with a keyboard shortcut seem like small things, but I can't imagine life without them anymore. I never understood why it was set off to the side in an (official, fir…

Yep, same here MAC + Temporary Containers extension is how web browsing should be handled by default imo No website deserves permanence of any data in my browser unless I so choose I haven't seen similar functionality in any of the new generation of browsers, nor any of the Firefox spinoffs as-yet

Fyi Kagi's Orion browser also supports containers

https://help.kagi.com/orion/features/containers.html

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#53

Post by em-bee »

lukeschlather wrote: post #37

I use profiles for this, I wonder what the tradeoffs are between the two approaches. I've actually been thinking about building some tools to make it easier to create and manage profiles on the fly. For me I really think profiles are better since the boundaries are harder - there's no worry about accidentally hitting the "log in with Google" button and clearly identifying myself to a site or similar, because I read t…

the benefit of containers is that they are all in the same browser. all your settings, extensions, remembered passwords, etc. apply to all containers and you can more easily reopen a site in a different container.

i don't get the login with google problem. you would be logged in in one container and not in any of the others. unless you open a site in your "google container", nothing will happen. the container where you log in to google should automatically stay logged in anyways (i am not sure, i don't use google login, but it works like that for many other logins, hackernews for example) so you should never be tempted to hit that login with google button. the separate process only helps you if you save the google password in the browser. if you are like me and don't store passwords in the browser then the containers have the advantage that it is easier to check if you are in the right container instead of making sure you are in the right profile, unless you use themes to differentiate your profiles.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#54

Post by em-bee »

Izkata wrote: post #47
dblohm7 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been available natively on Nightly with some basic UI support since they were first implemented a decade ago. Some other pre-release builds have them too but it's been too long and I cannot remember which ones did or didn't.

I don't use Nightly and I've been using containers for I think that long without any extension for it. Edit: looks like I enabled them manually and couldn't remember/find it, it's in about:config under the name "privacy.userContext" instead of "containers".

as far as i remember, the low level container functionality was always in the core browser. what the extension adds is the UI to manage containers. with this change it appears the UI is merged back into the core browser.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#55

Post by em-bee »

svl7 wrote: post #19

Multi-Account Containers paired with Container Proxy allows for some really cool setups. I especially like the options to use socks proxies. Hope they will add proper proxy support later.

interesting. i was not aware of that feature. this will be very useful.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#56

Post by em-bee »

ptx wrote: post #51

This is not new, and it's weird that this blog post doesn't acknowledge that. A a snapshot from 2017 [0] of their docs show the UI for this very feature. A snapshot from 2023 of their knowledge base [1] says that "Firefox Containers is a basic built-in feature". I just created a new profile in Firefox 140 ESR, started it in safe mode (which disables extensions), enabled "privacy.userContext.enabled" in about:config -…

the Multi-Account Containers extension always only added additional UI functions to manage containers. it was never a different container implementation. so they are migrating UI features from the extensions back into the core.

"Not all of the features of the add-on are available in the first-party version of containers just yet, we’re still building them out."

the migration is not complete yet. i expect that eventually the extension will be made redundant.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#57

Post by molticrystal »

Extensions per container would be a great addition if they don't already have that planned or available. Sometimes an extensions for privacy or security interferes with a website and if I could fork my base enabled extensions then disable a few for just that site it could keep things more compact and organized instead of having to clone a profile for every website with issues.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#58

Post by dolmen »

lukeschlather wrote: post #37

I use profiles for this, I wonder what the tradeoffs are between the two approaches. I've actually been thinking about building some tools to make it easier to create and manage profiles on the fly. For me I really think profiles are better since the boundaries are harder - there's no worry about accidentally hitting the "log in with Google" button and clearly identifying myself to a site or similar, because I read t…

Working with multiple profiles is painful as you have to duplicate setup, and data for extensions such as uMatrix isn't shared.

Also I would like each Firefox profile running instance to have its own icon at OS (desktop) level (Ubuntu, Windows) to ease switching.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#59

Post by dolmen »

rhdunn wrote: post #24
wsgeorge wrote: post #14

But Firefox also has browser profiles now (something I wanted for so long I moved back to chrome to get it), so what’s the purpose of first-party containers now? Don’t browser profiles provide a more robust, very visible delineation between different accounts/user profiles?

Firefox has had profiles for a long time (via about:profiles and a command-line argument). Unfortunately, the new profiles are not compatible with the old ones and cannot be migrated.

Firefox added a layer on top to allow to show the list of profiles in the UI.

I recently started a new job and built 3 profiles on Windows, then switched to Ubuntu. The migration of my profiles was painful because of that new layer: migration of each profile was working fine, but didn't see each other.

Thankfully Claude was helpful to debug and fix the settings. I had to edit SQLite databases.

Re: Firefox Containers Preview

#60

Post by nhumrich »

The only feature I need to make containers complete is setting a container as the current container for external links.

It's a real pain to click links in slack/etc open in the wrong account. I would be okay with some type of "links currently open in which container" setting, and changing that as needed. Or some selector when external.

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